To distribute streaming multimedia content to multiple mobile terminals, service providers typically use cost-effective broadcast multicast architecture of Third Generation (3G) wireless networks. In the existing 3G broadcast multicast architecture, multimedia content distribution spans from a content server in the core network to mobile terminals over a radio access network (RAN) using associated multicast groups formed at a gateway between the core network and the RAN. In existing 3G wireless networks, content servers improve transport reliability of distributed media streams using robustness features built into associated media codecs, and, optionally, transport level mechanisms such as Forward Error Correction (FEC). Disadvantageously, once wireless terminals join a multicast group, the wireless terminals receive the associated media stream with fixed encoding and fixed error protection applied by the content server.